Southington Reorganizes Tallying Procedures

SOUTHINGTON — When Election Day rolls around next week, there will be some changes in the way results are tallied.

Leslie Cotton, who was elected town clerk a year ago, said votes will no longer be tallied at Central Elementary School, but at town hall instead.

``Performing the tabulation at the town clerk's office will help to safeguard the integrity of the election results,'' Cotton said.

Because the town's largest elementary school is also a polling place, tallying votes there has caused a lot of confusion, Cotton said, particularly when the polls are about to close.

As 8 p.m. approaches, the gymnasium becomes a difficult place to work because a crowd -- including political party members waiting to collect votes and voters waiting to cast ballots -- gathers, Cotton said.

The gymnasium acoustics also make it difficult to hear tallies being called off, inviting errors, Cotton said.

``After the primary election, I had discussions with the Democratic and Republican election moderators,'' Cotton said. ``All were in agreement that Central in just not a conducive environment in which to do the detailed tabulation work.''

The public will still be allowed, however, to watch the running tally in Cotton's office.

Cotton, who was elected after longtime Democratic town clerk Juanine DePaola retired, has also initiated a new process for keeping track of absentee votes.

In the past, clerks not only filed the ballots by number and in alphabetical order, but also typed out index cards referring to them. Those index cards have been eliminated, Cotton said, because they are unnecessary.